Petition Launched to Name Newly Discovered Element 117 "Octarine"

I was interested to hear the other day that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has announced the verification of the discovery of four new chemical elements, completing the 7th row of the periodic table of elements.  At this time the four elements, 113, 115, 117, and 118, are going by temporary working names and symbols while the teams who discovered them decide on the final ones to be announced in the coming months.

In the meantime a petition has been launched by Blogger/Chemist Dr. Kat Day to name element 117 Octarine. As she writes in the introduction to the petition:

"This petition is to name element 117, recently confirmed by the International Union of Applied Chemistry, as 'Octarine', with the proposed symbol Oc (pronounced 'ook'), in honour of the late Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series of books."

The effort already has the support of the late author's Twitter feed, @terryandrob, which has been run by Sir Terry's assistant Rob Wilkins since the author's passing in March of 2015.

Name element 117 Octarine? If you think that's a good idea - and we do - please sign the petition here; https://t.co/j9MzGXCfFf

— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) January 6, 2016

At the time of this writing, just 3 days after it launched, the petition has already received 37,408 of the targeted 50,000 signatures. Mine is included in that list. I encourage you to check it out and add your name to the effort. Who knows, maybe the scientists responsible for this discovery are fans Terry Pratchett as well.

I would like to thank The Guardian for their lovely and in depth article which brought this petition to my attention.